Powszechna Kasa Oszczednosci Bank Polski Spólka Akcyjna (WSE:PKO)
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May 21, 2026, 5:01 PM CET
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Earnings Call: Q1 2026

May 14, 2026

Dariusz Choryło
Director of Investor Relations, PKO Bank Polski

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am happy to welcome you at the presentation of the first quarter 2026 financial result of the PKO BP. I am in charge of corporate relations, and I will move on to our CEO, Szymon Midera, Piotr Mazur, Krzysztof Dresler, and Piotr Bujak as the Chief Economist of the bank. I hand over to our CEO.

Szymon Midera
CEO, PKO Bank Polski

Thank you very much, Dariusz Choryło. It was definitely one of the strongest quarters in the banking sector. I'd like to thank all the Capital Group. We have a double-digit growth in all business lines, especially for lending activity, both corporate and individual customers. With these results, we come closer to the achievement of our strategic goals, and we consolidate our market position. The organic growth strategy works well and moves to 30% of retail banking share and nearly 20% of corporate banking share.

We are extremely happy with these results. Today, we are showing you the financial results for quarter 1 2026. We have today with us Tomasz Pol, managing the fastest growing retail department on the market. We will come back to that. We have with us Krzysztof Dresler, our CFO, Piotr Mazur, our Chief Risk Officer, and Piotr Bujak, the Head of our Analyst Team, who will give you the macroeconomic outlook details. Just have a look at the our key business results.

Let me start with the number of customers, more than 320,000 new customers, 70,000 quarter-to-quarter. We are extremely happy because it means 60% more than for 3 competing banks in total and more than 30% of what PKO BP had over the recent years. This is just the beginning of this increased customer acquisition. We would like to have more customers thanks to our new ecosystem project. It will contribute to the increasing number of customers. Digital acquisition plays an important part. 25% of customer onboarding done exclusively digitally.

This is because we revamp our processes, and we've been building business competence to acquire online customers. This growing customer base has translated into an increase in savings, 15% growth, and PLN 77 billion of savings across our corporate group. 30% in customer receivables. It's customer financing, PLN 338 billion. Across all key business lines, we have double-digit growth. Consumer loans, mortgage loans, and corporate loans as well. That's the first time. Total of assets, almost 12% growth year-over-year, PLN 594 billion. Equity, PLN 60 billion.

Tier 1 ratio stays at around 15% with substantial buffers above dividend criterion or regulatory minimum. As you see, we have strong growth across business lines. This yields net profit of PLN 2.5 billion, more than 2% year-over-year. The bank has been growing financially despite the decreases in interest rates and higher taxation. Gross income was extremely high, PLN 4 billion, 17% higher year-over-year. We are happy that business income has grown despite different interest rates.

More than 1 percentage point in interest income has been stabilized. If you add the difference of 2, 3 days, this interest income would be even higher. For fees and commissions, the increase is more than 10%. We are extremely happy, and we are proud of these results. We intend to go even faster. The return on equity is at 17.3% with annualization of contribution to the Bank Guarantee Fund. We would have 20% of the return on investment, nearly 20% of investment.

We do not see the need to change strategic 18%, above 18%, ROE goal. Net interest income around 4.3%. Cost-to-income, it's 34.4%. Operational efficiency for BFG distributed, we are above 30%. This is one of the best quality indices for operational excellence in Poland and in Europe. Cost of risk, 31 basis points. That's the pure cost of risk. The NPL has been going down. It shows that despite geopolitical risks, there is no pressure on the quality of our assets. Here you see the sum up of our strategic outlook, a slide.

This slide is important as it shows last six quarters in our key growth business pillars. Let me start with cash loan portfolio. 2.9 percentage points growth in market share. More than PLN 10 billion. mortgage loan portfolio, 1.5 percentage point in market share, more than 27%, and we are above our strategic goals. Additional PLN 20 billion over 18 months in mortgage loan portfolio. Business customer financing portfolio.

Here you see also an additional amount of PLN 20 billion exceeding 17% market share and nearly 1 percentage point to get to our target of 18%. Household savings. Here we are at around 26% of market share with an increase of around 1 percentage point over the last 18 months. Just don't forget about the sale of mutual fund, mutual investment fund units with additional amounts and an increase of more than 30%. If you take a different perspective, just imagine the bank buying the 4th-largest investment fund company on the market.

That's the scale of growth. Don't forget bancassurance at 50% year-over-year or the increase in small and medium undertakings. Here we also have, like, double-digit growth as well. Let me mention a new business line in our new business model. Our ecosystems used by the bank, we are and we will remain the leader of embedded finance where processes, purchase and procurement processes are deeply embedded and linked with the key business partners on the Polish market.

It's about e-commerce, Allegro, we've been testing the credit limit with the convenience store chain. Żabka. We've been developing and scaling up our own ecosystem of e-mobility used to sell vehicles. 35% growth over the last quarter. 2,600 vehicles sold in total. More than 1,000 in March. We are in the top 10 of dealership companies. This shows the scale and the opportunity to develop these ecosystems. As for Allegro, we have 231 yesterday of combined accounts. Every day on average, we merge about 2,000 accounts.

The last days have shown that we are able to even split 5,000 combined accounts. Our joint customers had purchases of PLN 150 million purchases on Allegro. We are now concentrating on the process of establishing accounts in the context of Allegro app in a very simple way. The first tests will begin already in June.

We would like in the middle of the holidays start a production so that early autumn, together with autumn, we should strongly support the second phase of building our ecosystem so that as early as this year we'll be able to catch 200, maybe up to 300,000 new customers of PKO BP within the framework of the new ecosystem. I think it's all. As regards my introduction. I will give the floor to Piotr, who will share with you a fresh macroeconomic outlook.

Piotr Bujak
Head of Analyst Team, PKO Bank Polski

Thank you so much. Before I discuss the outlook, some comment on Q1. It was not an easy quarter. It was a quarter when a new global shock was observed related to the war in the Middle East. The first two months of the quarter had quite severe winter, and it froze economic activity in many areas, not only in agriculture, even in industry and services. The economy somehow stopped the quarter 1. The growth was 3.5%, 3.4%. It was not an ideal economic environment. The situation was quite difficult, and therefore, the results obtained by PKO BP Group against the context seemed really very good.

Despite deteriorating macro conditions in Q1 as compared to earlier period, we are still optimistic as regards the outlook for an economic, Polish economy. We think that there will be an economic growth by 3.5% over 2026. The next quarters of this year will bring stabilization of that increase. Our view on the great resilience of Polish economy to external conditions is shared by various economists in Poland and abroad.

Let me quote a fresh forecast by International Monetary Fund. After two months of the conflict in the Middle East, there is downward revision of increase in GDP for several large European economies and upward revision for Poland. Similar are the changes of macro changes in large investment banks. We are not isolated in our view that the Polish economy should really bear well external shocks, also thanks to a large inflow of EU funds stimulating investment in the Polish economy.

Traditionally, large cost competitiveness of our economy and diversification, that is industry, services, they are well diversified. That all helps us also, allowing debtors of private sector. There are many factors that should isolate the Polish economy to a large extent from what is going on on the world in negative terms. The inflation rate is changing significantly. It is not so bad from the viewpoint of the banking sector, of course, if we look at it also from the perspective of interest rates.

The elimination of a deeper drop of inflation below the goal and a transitionary increase resulting from what's going on on the market of energy, raw materials. It means that the most likely scenario, this very for interest rates of in for NBP, is stabilization with a balance of risk factors moved asymmetrically to kind of slight increases of interest rates. That's the assessment of the banking market. This macro environment would mean a very good operational environment for the banks.

Economic growth may be slightly higher interest rates. That's the environment where loans should be growing, the lending action should develop and, at the same time, the quality of the assets should remain at a high level. Of course, the situation in the Middle East is a very serious potential risk for the macro scenario. We are monitoring it very carefully. From our viewpoint, the most important thing is the impact of these events on the financial situation of households by and also deterioration of the labor market.

We don't see here any deterioration on the enterprises market or employment market. The employment market remains stable. As for the negative impact of the conflict in the Middle East on real income of consumers and their financial situation, we don't see any impact so far yet. Some protection measures introduced by the government, like CP and package introduced by the government, thanks to which, fuel prices went down compared to what we might expect.

We have also regulated natural gas market and electricity market for households. We would need a much longer shock and the intensification of the conflict in the Middle East, so that to say a crucial negative impact on the Polish household situation. We are monitoring the situation, but we don't see any significant negative impact. Hence our forecast for the next quarters remain cautiously optimistic. Economic growth about 3%, 3.5%.

We maintain this forecast for this year with strong growth in investment, which will be conducive to increasing the credit loans for corporates, increase in savings of households. And assets of Polish households are still growing, and that has impact on the optimistic outlook for the development of lending volumes. We maintain our forecast of a one-digit increase in lending activities in all three key segments. Maybe there's no reason for a kind of positive surprise without we add upside probably or to the conflict in the Middle East.

Tomasz Pol
Vice President of the Management Board in charge of the Retail Banking and Firms Area, PKO Bank Polski

As for corporate loans, there might be some room for positive surprise against or versus our look, outlook. The macroeconomic environment remains favorable for the banking sector. Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. After working for a year, I'll be here about PKO BP, I have a pleasure to sum up the retail banking results.

We have seen four quarters of double-digit increase in business in these four quarters, and that's important because it shows that the strategic guidelines that we adopted really work in reality, so they are not separate items. While we have higher results, we see the continuity throughout the whole year that is characterized by double-digit growth.

There are three major areas that are the pillar for growth. The first of them is, I mean, closeness to our customers. That's the foundation of our strategy. We have 110 locations where our professional advisors talk to our customers. We have digital channels which in various rankings win on the Polish market. Effective contact center and virtual branches able to handle services for customers that prefer remote telephone methods of work.

We have another area where we win on the market, is full control of how we create and deliver value for the customers. Of course, we have the whole range of products here created at the bank, but we also have large companies within the group. As Szymon mentioned, 50% growth in insurance business. We have another pillar, which is mutual funds, with which we cooperate closely. We have leasing that contributes greatly to the growth in our small companies.

That's the second area that we use actively, and the third is investment. We believe that the growth, this growth should be sustained with ongoing investment. We look forward to partnership. Allegro, 230,000 customers, plus pilot phase for Żabka convenience stores and Automarket. These are the rooms for scaling up our business to reach out to new customers. More than 300,000 new customers year-to-year. It's a market record. Our competitors are lagging behind, and we've kept that record. It's not a one-off result. Let me move on to details.

Let me start with savings. We've accelerated in this business line with more than PLN 60 billion more year-to-year. 75 basis points in deposits and also in investments. We have an efficient machine to convert deposits into investment tools, and this is an important factor for the banks today. 35% increase in mutual funds. Again, a leading position among mutual funds in Poland. There are turbulences on the market.

What we've kept, increases between the end of the fourth quarter and the beginning of the first quarter. That's because of the effort of our banking team. Now let me move to our flagship product. Retail loans, double-digit growth, more than 20% growth in consumer loans. This is something that sets us apart on the market. We've sustained this increase. We've been a dominating player in mortgage loans, 30% growth, supported with strong sales in consumer loans. Thanks to the work of our team, we've beaten our record from the last year.

It's nearly 6% growth. In mortgage loans, you know, the situation, the market situation. We've been developing faster. Sales show 80% increase. That's a very promising result. Apart from very solid sales, we also are able to truly protect our portfolio, and this is a feature not that common and widespread on the market. Quarter to quarter, we've grown by PLN 5 billion, and we are happy because we've been working with customers that have been staying with us for long.

Just to sum up at the end, let me tell you that we are the only bank in Poland that was able to get 1 percentage point in both mortgage loans and consumer loans on the market over the last 12 months. That's something like an average size retail bank.

Thank you very much, Darek. As for corporate banking, I can say that the first quarter has confirmed that our business model is resistant and resilient, considering the environment, reduced demand for lending, and a decrease in interest rates. 11% increase in lending activities, 11% increase in market share. Let me highlight that, for medium and large business customers, this increase is at the level of 20%. For factoring, it's 19% of growth in factoring balance.

We've been growing in terms of the number of large corporate customers. 247 new large corporate customers. Let me also highlight our commitment to the financing of e-energy transition and in the purchase of green assets. We have PLN 8 billion at the end of the year. For state treasury bonds, corporate customers, there has been an increase of 38%. Corporate client financing is one of the key business line. It's an integral part of our business in bringing strong results. In every quarter, we show you the key corporate transactions, the largest transactions.

We are the first choice for small, medium, and very large companies. This overview of transactions shows a high quality and deep diversification of our customer portfolio. This is yet another proof that in corporate banking, PKO BP has been a leader and has been able to consolidate their position. Thank you very much. Now I move on to our CFO. Financial results. It's predictability, it's work, it's repeatability. The work of the whole team, we are extremely grateful. I would like to recognize their work.

I would like to recognize the work of our staff and the contributions of each and every one of them. The financial results have been generated in a very, very turbulent environment. Geopolitics didn't help in the first quarter. We reviewed our forecasts, not to the depth that was required for other banks. We have different interest rates. The first quarter helped to reverse the declining tendency, but there was a 20-point decrease over the first 3 months.

Krzysztof Dresler
CFO, PKO Bank Polski

It was a huge effort that needed to be engaged by banks to mitigate the effect. Moreover, we have a 30% corporate tax income rate first year. The effective rate is at 36%. Not everything is covered by the tax shield. That is why it was not easy, we still have a double digit growth in net income year to year, thanks to a consistent work every day, agreements, consultations, exchanges. How can we break down this profit? Well, the profit is based on our core business.

Tomasz Pol
Vice President of the Management Board in charge of the Retail Banking and Firms Area, PKO Bank Polski

This is the critical element for our net profit, whether it's year to year or quarter to quarter. The dynamics was positive. There were increases. In the fourth quarter, we had some slight one-off incidents. This quarter, we've normalized profit across other business lines. We've been looking at the interest margin. It has been going down because of the compounding factors just presented to you. We will do our best to report the nearly the same results as for the last year in margin, net margin income.

Krzysztof Dresler
CFO, PKO Bank Polski

What are the three sources of stability or the factors behind the slowing down of the decreases in net interest income? First, shares portfolio helping us. Next, fixed rate mortgage loans, an important share, and the policy to have swaps on currency exchange rates and interest rates. If you look at our interest rates for assets, it has gone slower than for equity, so we did not stabilize at the detriment of deposits interest rates.

Tomasz Pol
Vice President of the Management Board in charge of the Retail Banking and Firms Area, PKO Bank Polski

They're quite moderate. Here, the liability side helped us, although this change one to one did not happen. The three elements that I've mentioned earlier were of the highest importance here. As for what we are proud of and what we declared earlier, we got back to the double-digit level of dynamics on fee and commission income. What's really very good when you say it year on year, because here there is seasonality, so therefore comparison quarter to quarter very often is not tangible.

Anyhow, we observe here a positive dynamic. We're very happy, especially with the capital line that is brokerage houses or TFIs, mutual funds. It is not something that contributes to fee and commission income. It gives also us the basis for the fact, for the belief that investment waves in Poland would even become stronger because the stock exchange is a natural source of obtaining capital. The stronger the stock exchange, the more work on investment credit banks have, because they have to supplement their equity.

Therefore, this capital market line gives very good contribution here. What is crucial and what we emphasize quarter to quarter is the effect of transactions. Customers use our services. It is not the effect of tactics, of adapting the prices to the provision levels. It's the issue of transaction volume. Two years ago we withdraw the commission on providing cash loans. Therefore these two lines are still very strong.

Another thing we are very happy with, as regards Profit Plus account, is cost effectiveness, of course, cost efficiency. We really were concerned how the year would look this year, and we declared that we'd continue our efforts so that to care of cost efficiency as regards current costs. We also declare that we would not make use of the effect of a certain optimization of development costs. The strategy, which is called here of growth and development, it still remains its name.

Krzysztof Dresler
CFO, PKO Bank Polski

Development, as Tomasz mentioned, is related to the initiatives that must be supported from the cost side, and we would be efficient here. We would maintain this efficiency. You know, Q1 is not giving the best measure regards costs in our group. We will do what we decided to do.

I mean, this one-digit dynamics would be maintained because we expect to continue a marketing offensive and support of these initiatives. For cost income ratio, a slight increase in Q1. That's the effect of including the contribution in BFG PLN 418 million. This contribution is not annualized, over the year this element would be weakened.

If we annualized it, we would be above 30%. This is absolute record in the banking sector. Another thing we are proud of is our issuance activity. We define our role broader than just supplementing necessary issuance. We as the biggest financial institution in this part of Europe must often have this burden of determining a new benchmark. Two, three weeks ago, we managed to do that successfully.

We placed EUR 700 million. These were bonds with a coupon with margin below 100 basis points. That was our goal, not only to improve interest cost, but to determine a lower benchmarks, to squeeze everything out of these margins because we are under the trajectory of emerging markets. We would continue our efforts in this regard. They are to our benefit and also to the benefit of other banking market players. That's it from me. Piotr, over to you.

Piotr Mazur
Chief Risk Officer, PKO Bank Polski

Of course, you can grow in double digit speed and without taking any additional risk. We can confirm it. Quarter after quarter, we maintain cost of risk at the level of 30 basis points. We are also improving our efficiency as regards a settlement of finalized court cases. You can see it on the right-hand side on the slide. The NPL level is systematically going down. The coverage of provisions is stable and at a very high level. I think we should comment here two issues with regard to this slide.

When we look at quarterly cost of risk broken down into particular products, we may draw a conclusion that we assume a more risk, a higher risk on consumer finance. When we look at early overdues and NPL population, we don't have such Things, but we here introduce new models and we show you analytics. We showed you how we were experimenting in that regard. We introduced new solutions.

They cause kind of off one impact on that, we expect that the trend would go back to the stable level soon. The second issue is the war in the Middle East, its impact on the business portfolio. We have reviewed the investment portfolio. We identified below 2% of the total loan exposure in the branches, in the sectors that could be directly affected by this problem. Even in earlier quarters, we created provisions for these sectors, the PLN 50 million. We feel comfortable as for today.

If the situation does not develop, we should not expect increase in on cost of risks due to that thing. Another slide is about CHF loans. As we declared, we think it's the last year where we create provisions in that area. These provisions are already much smaller. We have just 9,000 active agreements here, and the level of provisions is really very high. We continue all the time the mediation and taking out the same litigation proceedings, and we are continuing settlements with customers.

You can see it on the slide, the red line, the dynamic drop in lawsuits in courts. The last issue, capital ratios. All the time we have surpluses above regulatory requirements and payment of the dividend payment. We've seen that this dynamic growth consumes less capital.

Hence, the activities we take, securitization, the guarantees, that we use from BGK, and the project that we would launch related to optimization of capital, and even better use of particular products with a view to optimization. We are convinced that it will show, help us grow all the time while maintaining capital security. Finally, I'd like to thank the whole team of PKO BP for such great results. Thank you so much.

Szymon Midera
CEO, PKO Bank Polski

Thank you, Piotr. The strategy of organic growth is working. We have a very dynamic acquisition of new customers. Because we are now ahead of our competitors and the biggest Polish banks as regards an increase in new customers. We have double-digit growth in key business lines, in all business lines. This is an absolute phenomenon compared to competition on the Polish market. We are able to, say, mitigate interest income and result on activity, which is a derivative of a completely different level of interest rates.

We are able to somehow amortize net results in different tax circumstances, that all has impact on the full financial stabilization, high profitability, and a very good index of operational efficiency. Finally, the dividend. We, as the board, we put a recommendation for payment up to 75% of dividend from the net profit, which would be PLN 6.14 per share. As you can see, we are able to share this increase in value with our shareholders. Thank you so much. Now let's please ask questions.

Speaker 7

Good afternoon, Citi Handlowy Brokerage House. Let me start with congratulations about these excellent results. Three groups of questions from me. First of all, because we are talking with the market leader, I cannot resist the temptation, I would like to ask about the specific market segment. Just so you know, take up a lid a little bit and see what is happening behind.

We had high sales in March, market data shows that in April, the supply has stabilized, prices have stabilized following the developments in the Middle East and on the financial market. What was the breakdown of your sales for fixed and variable interest rates and for refinancing in retail loan.

Tomasz Pol
Vice President of the Management Board in charge of the Retail Banking and Firms Area, PKO Bank Polski

The 52% of our sales concerned fixed interest rate loans. We are in this corridor between 50% and 60%, and there is no discrepancy from the norm. The tendency is upwards. What is happening in the market? Well, there is a wave, a major wave of refinancing.

Szymon Midera
CEO, PKO Bank Polski

I showed you that on our slide on the retail loans. There are more and more mortgage loans being sold, however, the value in total has not been going up. We do not want to take part in that game. For us, 17% of sales is external financing, so the refinancing of loans of other banks. With that share, we could increase that level, but that's not our goal. Our goal is to provide primary initial loans for the purchase of real estate, and this is the support we would like to provide to our customers. Are our loans refinanced by other banks? Well, we've put in place some systemic mechanisms to get the early warning signs.

Just to be prepared that maybe our customers would leave us and go to our competitors, so we can act ahead of that decision, talk to the customer, and prevent the squeeze. We do benefit from this situation, however, we do not want to act aggressively to have the refinancing from outside. Still, we get more from outside than we give up to other banks. I don't know if I answered your question.

Speaker 7

Okay. The second group of questions is about costs. I'm impressed. The level of your cost management in the first quarter, it's actually flat, apart from the increase in the Bank Guarantee Fund contribution. Still, it's a narrow range. It's a large range between 0% and 9.5%.

Krzysztof Dresler
CFO, PKO Bank Polski

We have not provided such guidance that to have a cost increase range between 0 and 9.99%. We have taken into account the inflation rate. Just don't forget that you should analyze that through 2 streams. You have business-as-usual costs. Do we want increases there? There is this initiative-driven or strategic initiative-driven stream of costs. For each stream of costs, we will take a different approach, applying cost management solutions to both of them.

However, the approach should be different. We are in the remodeling, the revamping of our banking model, and we'll try to stay tuned to what is happening in AI and automation. There have been some trials, some of them are promising. Some others are less. Human-in-the-loop is at the very heart of the new solutions. It's not about replacing humans, it's more about offering tools for humans. It's been a sustained effort, and the first quarter doesn't say it all. Anyway, it's more changeable than when we provided our initial guidance.

Speaker 7

Cost of risk now. Actually two questions about it. PLN 50 million added this quarter because of the war in the Middle East. Do you have any overlays from the previous quarters? Secondly, some banks would detail the impact of macroeconomic factors on the quarterly forecast. Could you please give us such an overview? What was the impact of macroeconomic factors on the level of your provisions?

Piotr Mazur
Chief Risk Officer, PKO Bank Polski

The provisions established during COVID and at the outbreak of the war in Ukraine were adequate. Some of these provisions have been maintained also because, as Piotr said, we have macroeconomic turbulences. We could see that in mortgage loan segment. We've established some provisions for reimbursement relief scheme, and right now these provisions have been closed. The provisions and the level of provisions have been aligned accordingly.

That could be from 20%-30% of the value of specific provisions quarter to quarter, depending what is going on, up and down. This is about the macroeconomic impact and the methodology. We can complement, we do publish our stress test to show our resilience, and we've developed a new stress test just to reflect the new situation. This is an in-house test. Among our European peers, we are classified quite high. We have strong resistance and resilience. If we added that to the key presentation, that could stir questions that something bad was going on.

This resilience have been being built for years, and it's been subject to ongoing analysis. Stress tests are performed for a number of scenarios, and if we see any warnings, we would communicate them. The coverage with provisions I just shown, testifies that we are resilient and that we are protected.

Speaker 7

I promised the three groups of questions has, but because nobody else would like to take the floor, one more question about 2027 and macroeconomics. The forecasts for GDP 2027 for Poland has been reviewed downwards. What is your perspective?

Piotr Bujak
Head of Analyst Team, PKO Bank Polski

Still a cautiously optimistic look. We were not so, let's say, greatly optimistic about it for this year, and it turned out that because of the materialization of geopolitics, politic risk, we were right. We were not so overly optimistic, as regarding 2027. Our outlook for an increase of GDP is 3% next year in Poland, and we stick to that scenario.

The situation in the Middle East will calm down, I guess, and even here, there might be a positive outcome, and there is a chance to have 3.5% growth. If we add inflation, getting back to the level of the goal that we would observe and stable interest rates, that would be a very good environment for the banking sector in Poland. There is no better macro in Europe than that in Poland. There is data on GDP for European economies confirm that.

We have slowed down because of the difficult situation, the global environment, and as I've mentioned, the severe winter also had a negative impact here in Poland more than in other economies. Nevertheless, the Polish economy grew much more than other economies in Europe, and it seems it will continue to do so in the coming quarters. We still have several questions from the online listeners. Most of them have been addressed.

However, question number 1, the question about subsidies for the foundation of PKO BP that was accounted for in Q1, but normally it was accounted for in Q4. Can we expect double cost because of that in Q4 2026? You mean the PLN 60 million subsidy, it pertains to this year, that is 2026. For us, it's a kind of technicality.

Krzysztof Dresler
CFO, PKO Bank Polski

We are working on it by the end of the year, it depends on the permission of corporate permissions from corporations. Either it's in Q4 and you get used to it, that's why you are surprised, there is no surprise here. It's a technical issue. This pertains to 2026. If we have something at the end of this year, that would pertain to 2027. The question is whether we are able to do it in 2026 or 2027. Technical issue, 2026, indeed has been somehow addressed by the subsidy that you see. Another technical question is about reversing the cost of risk in mortgages. How long will the trend last, do you think?

Piotr Mazur
Chief Risk Officer, PKO Bank Polski

I've already mentioned something about it, because we developed these provisions when we, there were loan, or credit holidays, COVID and the war in Ukraine. Now we see very good quality of that portfolio. The level of default is almost 0, that gives us the effect of reversing part of these provisions. All, in addition, a small part is due to the fact that if we create provisions for legal risk and exposure is diminishing because of that, the provisions are smaller, the trend may still maintain at the beginning of this quarter.

The colleagues in retail are very active with regards increase in credit activity and loan activity, because of its volume and portfolio provisions, they would have impact on the increase in the provisions. I think it's a natural effect.

Krzysztof Dresler
CFO, PKO Bank Polski

The last question concerns LCR ratio in Q1. The question is, one, it increased about by 15% compared to Q4. Is there any reason for that? As far as I remember, well, LCR for Q1 is 270, and Q4 it was 271. It slightly dropped, quarter-on-quarter. In the long term, of course, it increased. It's the effect of the change of the structure of deposits.

I mean, in retail deposits, we note smaller outflows. We also had some tests on a certain group of bonds, and they classified us to they enabled us to classify it to the liquid portfolio. That's it. That's the end of the questions.

Dariusz Choryło
Director of Investor Relations, PKO Bank Polski

Thank you very much for participating in the today's conference. I invite you to the next conference, the next call.

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